Saturday, July 30, 2016

The Trump phenomenon is the deadliest foe political correctness has ever faced. It's not lost on his backers. To the contrary, after immigration it is quite possibly the next single biggest driver of his support. From a Pew report on PC culture:

Trump supporters are more hostile to political correctness than Republicans as a whole are, and also far more hostile than independents and Democrats are. This is the case despite the fact that some of those Trump supporters are independents and Democrats. Even without cross tabs the unavoidable deduction here is that Republicans, independents, and Democrats who support Trump have less patience and use for political correctness than Republicans, independents, and Democrats on the whole do.

More:

White men, who have the most to lose from PC nonsense, are correspondingly the most hostile. Blacks, for whom political correctness must be ubiquitous lest the obvious--that blacks living in WEIRDO societies are, on average, destined to be less successful and more dysfunctional than non-blacks--be made explicit, are the most supportive of it (see Black Live Matter).

If we look closely we can detect outlines of the Alt Right in the graphic. While the 18-29 category is considerably less white than the older age categories are, and the 30-49 category is less white than the 50+ categories are, people under the age of 50 are more hostile towards PC than their elders. Thus among these younger age cohorts, whites are decidedly less PC than whites among older cohorts. We're more skeptical of multicult fantasy talk than our parents are.

Friday, July 29, 2016

Google Trends extends back to 2004. Consequently, it has captured search interest for four national party convention cycles in its history. In '04, '08, and '12 interest in the Democrat convention was greater than interest in the Republican convention.

For the black prostitute (aspiring mother?), in contrast, who is only interesting to black men and for whom there is just four for every one of her, more aggressive marketing is required for success.

Note also that the question doesn't distinguish between paying for sex and having been paid for sex but we, being aware of biological realities, are able to use the question as a good proxy for men paying for and women being paid for sex.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

The #DNCLeaks story is too significant not to pass comment on even if I don't have anything particularly novel or perspicacious to add.

The clumsy way Twitter tried to kill the story should nevertheless put the Alt Right on high alert. First they deleted #DNCLeaks. Then they brought it back as #DNCLeak, sending all the #DNCLeaks' posts into the void. Then they manipulated it further by making it #DNCleaks, which looks like DN Cleaks (what's a "cleak"?) rather than DNC Leaks.

Yes, it's run by cultural Marxists who have no qualms about censoring dissident views. But despite all that it's one of the largest platforms we have, at least as long as Twitter's censorship is reactive. Once it becomes fully proactive, as is already the case with shadow banning and the expulsion of high-profile Alt Righters like Milo.

The 20,000 emails reveal that it's not merely that the major media are in collusion with the Democrat party, it's that they're taking marching orders from it.

Caught redhanded, the major media are trying to turn this into a story about Russian cyber infiltration and Trump's even-handed--rather than hysterically antagonistic--treatment of Putin. It's not clear what the ultimate source of the email leaks were--it could've been an internal whistleblower within the Democrat machine--but it's inconsequential. The rot at the heart of the process is what matters.

The DNC corruptly rigs the nomination process (man, is Trump's branding masterful or what?--He's been using the terms "rigged" and "crooked" for several months now and those descriptors only become more and more apt by the day), Russia points it out, Trump jocularly asks Russia to expose more of Hillary's emails, and that becomes the story!

We have a gang leader we'll call Hillary. Hillary's gang kills a woman, a woman we'll call Integrity. The police are not only aware of the murder, Hillary's gang actually instructs them to lure Integrity to her final resting place and then create distractions elsewhere so no one will notice Hillary's gang murdering her. Though they thought they'd lured Integrity to a secluded place, someone captured the murder on video. We'll call him Putin. Another man--we'll call him Donald--is in a turf war with Hillary. He celebrates Putin for exposing the murder. The police ignore the overwhelming evidence of homicide perpetrated by Hillary and her gang--after all, they were accomplices--and instead arrest Putin and Trump for violation of the Hillary gang's privacy.

Even with the Democrats' ever-growing demographic advantage, it's not going to be enough to negate the astonishing corruption of the Clinton machine and the complicity of the major media in its nefarious activities.

Speaking of Silver, how dopey does he look for pairing the launch of his 2016 general election model with the headline "Trump Has A 20 Percent Chance Of Becoming President"? The release date was arbitrary. If he'd put it out several weeks earlier, when Trump was marginally ahead in the RCP average--as he is again today--he wouldn't have been able to dress up yet another punditry prediction of Trump's impending downfall in quantitative clothing.

As of today, Silver's model shows Hillary with a 54% chance of winning to Trump's 46%. Oops.

* Most poll samples are created by mirroring demographic population profiles or by using turnout from previous election cycles to estimate turnout for the election in question, and most of these are conducted on registered voters. But "likely voters" is a stronger predictor of the actual behavioral intentions of potential voters. These "likely voters" polls have consistently shown Trump doing several points better than "registered voters" polls do.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

We've spent some time looking at the bizarrely skewed Reuters-Ipsos general election polling that has, over the last couple of months, included survey samples that are often more than 50% self-identified Democrats, about one-third Republican, and the residual being independents or third-party backers.

The latest R-I poll is a staggering 56% Democrat, 39% Republican, and 5% other. Despite an almost 20 point advantage in partisan affiliation, though, Hillary is beating Trump by just a hair, 41%-38%. In this latest iteration, which runs from July 18-22, Trump is getting 9% of Democrat support while Hillary is getting 8% of Republican support.

The last time Trump was this close to Hillary in R-I the sample was much more evenly distributed by partisan affiliation, at 45% Democrat and 42% Republican. If current polling included the same partisan distribution now as it did back in May it would show Trump crushing Hillary by something like 43%-32%.

Caveats about convention bounces should be taken into account, of course. That said, things are looking good for the Trump train.

In a post last month, Vox Day made a couple of assertions: 1) Agnostics are more intelligent than atheists, and 2) Atheists don't trust other people because they're projecting their own lack of integrity onto others.

I've looked at the first issue before and recall the ordering, from most to least intelligent, going agnostic-atheist-uncertain believer-firm believer, but am not able to find the relevant post, so we'll recreate it here by tapping old faithful, the GSS.

For contemporary relevance, all responses are from 2000 onward. To avoid racial confounding only whites are considered and to avoid language fluency issues only those born in the US are considered. Mean IQ, as converted from wordsum scores assuming a white mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, by belief in God (n = 4,734):

On God

IQ

Agnostic

105.3

Atheist

103.6

Uncertain believer

100.8

Firm believer

98.4

Parenthetically, "firm believers" make up more than half of the respondent pool, which is why the results appear at first blush to skew above an average of 100.

Without passing comment on the speculative reasons why it might be the case, the second assertion can be evaluated by looking at dichotomous responses to the question, "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in life?" Using the same parameters as above, the percentages who say that most people can be trusted, by belief in God (n = 5,294):

On God

%Trust

Agnostic

48.5

Atheist

43.1

Uncertain believer

40.9

Firm believer

38.4

If being trusting of others is considered desirable, the ordering runs the same as it does for intelligence. Agnostics are more trusting and more intelligent than atheists, but atheists are more trusting and intelligent than theists (as gauged by the metrics employed here, anyway).

By definition using natural methods to discern, discover, or comprehend aspects of the supernatural are likely to come up short. Some people interpret things as being revelatory, and many more benefit from--and realize that society benefits from--the aspects of unity and teleology derived from trying to make sense of the supernatural. I don't get much out of that myself and find that stoicism applied to the 21st century works better for me, but everyone's mileage will vary. Find what gets you the farthest and ride it.

The GSS offers a cruder and less precise way of looking at the same thing, though our sample is 20x as large.

The following table shows average IQ estimates (converted from wordsum scores and assuming a white average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15) for female respondents whose weights were deemed either "below average", "average", "somewhat above average", or "considerably above average". Those who conducted the interviews were the ones who assigned respondents to one of the four weight categories. To avoid language fluency confounds only survey respondents born in the US are included (n = 616):

Thursday, July 21, 2016

When Ted Cruz melted down in the face of impending disaster for his campaign in Indiana, I thought it would render a future run exceedingly difficult for him if Trump ended up joining the Republican party pantheon alongside Reagan and Lincoln. If referring to oneself as a "Trump Republican" became comparable to what "Reagan conservative" or "the party of Lincoln" had been prior to this election cycle, the following clip would be the kill shot every one of Cruz's primary opponents would effortlessly dispatch him with:

This was of course dwarfed by his convention speech. It's hard not to chalk this political self-immolation up to anything other than pathological vindictiveness. The much savvier approach would've been to publicly but tepidly endorse Trump and then work behind the scenes to sabotage him. Or better yet, to reconcile. Trump has a Caesarian disposition when it comes to clemency as Trump's invitation for Cruz to speak in prime time on the second to last night demonstrated. But once he's betrayed, Trump doesn't forget.

Consider the political implications. If Trump loses in November, especially if it's within five points or so, Cruz is going to get a lot of the blame. It's not only firm Trump supporters who will blame Cruz's betrayal for the loss. Most Republican voters, including those lukewarm to Trump, will hold Cruz responsible for Hillary being elected.

Is Cruz delusional enough to think that he'll be the nominee in 2020 with the Republican electorate and all his GOP opponents justifiably pointing to him as the primary reason Hillary got her first term?

It'd be far-fetched enough if the quisling was someone like Kasich or ¡Jabe!. At least those guys could conceivably find some establishment support.

Cruz, though, had more supporter overlap with Trump than any other candidate in the field of 17. He was vying for the same anti-Establishment designation that Trump was. Cruz was acutely aware of this. It's why he alone among primary contestants refused to go after the god-emperor in the first few debates.

The vast majority of primary participants who voted for Cruz in the primaries will be voting for Trump in a few months. He's sabotaging their political aspirations--and the well-being of the country if the party platform is taken seriously--for a modestly better chance that the next Republican presidential primary is in 2020 instead of 2024 and also for a drastically decreased chance that he'll win the nomination if a 2020 primary takes place. This stunningly selfish act of treachery will be, courtesy of social media and Youtube, there for the world to see and remember.

Cruz, aged only 45, rapidly made his way through the cursus honorum. There were many consulships on his horizon. He would've been in a strong position to be Trump's VP. The two led a joint rally together and had been publicly affable towards one another in the debates and other media. In his early fifties at the end of Trump's second term, the 2024 Republican nomination would've been his for the taking.

That's all gone now. If he's done anything, it's united the party against himself, not against Trump.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

This PRI's The World report is delightfully painful to listen to. The show's host, Marco Werman, is an archetypal SWPL who has NPR's breathy unctuousness to a tee. In typical mainstream media fashion he is gently guiding the correspondent at the RNC into insinuating that Trump supporters at the convention are one overly zealous mark away from lynching the next Mexican they see.

The correspondent, a Celt named Maria Muriel, starts off well, noting how "bizarre" it was that the crowd "aggressively" chanted "USA! USA!" or "Trump! Trump!" whenever a speaker who had a family member murdered by an illegal immigrant made a point.

One of the speakers, Sabine Durden, whose son was killed in a vehicular accident by an illegal who was drunk at the time and had been arrested twice on DUI charges--but never deported--emphasized that she chose to refer to those here illegally as "illegal aliens".

That was especially strange for me because I'm a journalist and in our newsroom our style is not to say "illegal immigrants". The term we use is "undocumented immigrant". So it was kind of jarring to me to be in a place where the term 'illegal immigrant' was used so often and so aggressively. Being an immigrant myself, I felt also at points uncomfortable being there because the crowd would just get so pumped up.

We're now almost three minutes into the five minute story. So far, so good.

But then Muriel goes off script:

Werman: So is the GOP drawing some kind of distinction between German, Slovenian, and European immigrants [on one hand] and people south of the border and everybody else [on the other]?

Muriel: I don't know that they're doing exactly that. What I have heard from talking to people here is they're drawing a very clear line between legal immigration and illegal immigration.

Oh Maria, why would you introduce what the people you're putatively reporting about actually said? This isn't a news story, it's an exercise in virtue signalling. Come on, of course they were insinuating that white immigrants were good and non-white immigrants were bad! [AE agrees with the thrust of what she was supposed to say, incidentally]

Werman gives her another chance only to be disappointed a second time as she manages to blow it twice in less than two minutes:

Werman: Listening to the crowd, did you feel any disconnect when Sabine Durden or Melania Trump got up to speak that these were also immigrants?

Muriel: You know what? I actually didn't. I feel like from having spoken to Trump supporters that they're logic is "if you are a legal immigrant you are fine and we welcome you as long as you follow the law".

If you don't listen to any other part of the clip, at least listen to the last ten seconds as a weary, despondent Werman wraps up the report in defeated resignation.

Muriel, who appears to be a millennial, has marinated in the CultMarx SJW academic and journalistic stews for her entire adult life. She probably doesn't even realize that to most Americans, even NPR-listening SWPLs, the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is not merely semantic.

Werman, a veteran, understands this. He tries to get her to go beyond relaying the quite reasonable problem Trump supporters have with the nation's immigration laws not being enforced and illegal scofflaws given free reign to run around killing Americans and instead to guide listeners towards a conclusion that the real reason Trump supporters are getting so riled up is due to their barely controllable hatred of non-whites.

Sessions out? Okay, then Kobach. Or Arpaio. Or Pat Buchanan. Or Virgil Goode. Or Chuck Baldwin. Or James Webb. Or Scott Brown.

I could keep pounding out preferable names and my fingers would fall off before I'd get to Christie, Pence, or Gingrich. But those three and Sessions were the only ones under serious consideration over the last couple of weeks. Pence, in fact, was only initially contacted a few weeks ago, presumably after Sessions declined:

With Sessions out, my contention is that Pence is probably the least bad of the three, and I laid out why here.

That said, there is nothing Pence brings that Sessions doesn't other than youth and better bone structure. While we can trust him as much as we can trust anyone else in congress, cucks trust him, too. Ann Coulter's observation that this pick was a mistake--or at the very least, suboptimal--resonates with me.

Parenthetically, let's distinguish between cucks and #NeverTrump. The latter is a joke, a handful of self-important chiefs without any indians. The former, however, are a non-negligible electoral force. These are dorky church dads and silly soccer moms who have always voted Republican but don't like Trump. Ned Flanders is the archetype. They won't vote for Hillary or even third-party, but some number won't vote at all. I live in Kansas. The circles I swim in are thick with these people. They're everywhere.

But we're going to see Hillary pick a white running mate instead of wasting the VP spot on blacks, who will vote Democrat more overwhelmingly than tradcons will vote Republican. Too many won't vote at all, though, and it's going to tell in states like North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

Gingrich has neither crossover appeal nor tradcon appeal. As a presidential candidate he's a proven loser and Trump wasn't going to pick someone who'd run unsuccessfully before. Parsing Trump's rhetoric over the last several months made that clear. It's why I could confidently put hundreds of dollars on Cruz, Christie, Kasich, Rubio and Carson "No" in the betting markets. Gingrich's congressional history is as antithetical to Trump's message as Pence's was, probably more so (at least Pence opposed No Child Left Behind, one of the very few who did). Gingrich is on record saying he could work with a president Bill Clinton but he never could have worked with a president Pat Buchanan.

Christie's crossover appeal is limited to the Northeast. He's toxic in the cuck corridor as his awful performance in Iowa showed. Trump/Gingrich or Trump/Christie would definitely lose Iowa and could put putatively safe states like Utah or the Dakotas in play. Pence isn't obviously worse than either of them are in Ohio. Kasich is contemptible but he's a popular governor in what will probably be the single most important state in November, and Pence is the most likely of the three to bring Kasich over. Trump's clearest path to victory is to flip Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania and hold where Romney did everywhere else.

I doubt many blue collar voters are going to investigate Pence's various positions, find out he is less hard-line on immigration than Trump, and then abandon their plans to vote Trump. There are very few voters who go to that level of engagement.

Add to that Trump's position on trade having been rock solid for decades, and he brings that into a political environment where, for generations, no other serious presidential candidate from either party--with the exception of Bernie Sanders this time around--has been one-tenth as critical of what's passed off as free trade as he has been. If trade is your issue, you weren't wavering on Trump no matter who he picked as VP.

Cicatrizatic again, on the idea that Trump is a closeted white nationalist:

Trump is a pragmatist who read Coulter's book and realized which way the wind blows. He is a good healthy force for steering America in the direction of nationalism. But he is not and never purported to be the embodiment of pure ethnic nationalism.

Trump is a businessman, a non-ideologue, a negotiator who will by nature compromise to the middle on almost all of his positions. He won't necessarily deport all of the illegals, but will likely deport many of the worst ones. It won't be a 50 foot concrete wall across the entirety of the Mexican border, but rather some combination of wall and security fence.

It is good to stand behind the Trump movement, but the alt-right should not make the mistake of projecting onto Trump their ultimate ideals. He is at best a temporary vessel in the fight against globalism.

The idea that Trump will win the general election, doubling as a referendum on a wall and on a moratorium on Muslim immigration and then be impeached for trying to do what he was given a mandate to do is far-fetched. A more realistic risk is that Pence stages a walkout sometime between now and November and leaving the campaign in apparent disarray.

He could be a GOPe plant preparing to self-destruct and bring Trump down with him. As far as infiltrators go, though, he can't be anywhere close to optimal for the saboteurs.

On the other hand, Trump just offered Pence more than the GOPe ever could have in Pence's wildest dreams. Is he going to sink beneath the waves of a sinking ship whose moment has come and gone, or is he going to abandon that ship to get on an unstoppable train? That he could barely spit out his promised endorsement of Cruz in between lavishing praise on Trump should give us hope. Asked yesterday about the wall and the Muslim immigration ban, Pence said he supported both.

He is the best cuck convert of the three as well. Gingrich and Christie have been on board for months. Pence is fresher. He creates the perception that people from all over the map are coming around to Trump. As Scott Adams has demonstrated again and again, the importance of the psychology here is difficult to overstate.

My feeling is that Trump isn't going Manchurian candidate here but he's not going Sulla, either. As I've said before, he's being Caesarian, and he has the trap Reagan fell into as a cautionary tale on how to proceed more prudently.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Pence is from the cuck corridor. German Midwestern niceness doesn't mesh well with Trump's unapologetic pugilistic virility. Pence endorsed Cruz in the primaries, too, so this is a sort of olive branch to those supporters. Pence is a cookie cutter Conservative, Inc pol. He complements Trump's weaknesses among traditional Republicans.

Gingrich is all style and no substance. The number of things--not just political--that he has been wrong about over the years is pretty staggering when they're taken in tandem. I remember a Fox News special he hosted a decade ago about the impending bird flu epidemic (that never materialized). He is also a serial philanderer, far worse of one than Trump ever was.

Chris Christie should never have been taken seriously for the spot. He's a socially moderate Republican from the northeast--in other words, he's Trump's demographic doppelganger. He makes no sense as VP. Attorney general is far more likely.

Among the serious contenders I preferred Sessions by a mile, of course. He's old, physically small, and not charismatic so it's not surprising that he wasn't picked. But he'll be by far Trump's most reliable congressional liaison. A Trump presidency makes him the country's most important and powerful senator.

At least it wasn't a ridiculous affirmative action pick like Condi Rice. The symbolic power of a presidential ticket comprised of two white men shouldn't be dismissed in The Current Year.

The biggest risk Trump is taking with a GOPe-approved figure like Pence is that Pence will face a lot of pressure from the most determined ‪#‎NeverTrumpers‬ to abandon Trump sometime between now and November, a move that could sabotage Trump's candidacy. Trump wouldn't have had to worry about that from Sessions, Christie, or even Gingrich, but it's a legitimate concern with Pence.

All this is predicated on Pence actually being offered the spot. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that he is testing the waters here just as he has done remarkably effectively with opposition adjectives (low-energy, lyin', crooked).

My point isn't to reveal as myth the idea of isonomy in practice, or even, increasingly, in the abstract. Another justice, Clarence Thomas, has pointed out that died some time ago. Richard Posner's advice for those in the legal profession--that they not spend even mere "seconds" studying the US constitution--is vocationally solid. Of course Trump's judge, Gonzalo Curiel, will put his finger--and anything else he can grab with heavy hand--on the scale. Ginsburg will too if she's given the chance. This is a corollary to what the late Lee Kwan Yew famously observed about mulitracial democracies.

Parenthetically, the point isn't to chide Trump for dropping the subject, either. I'd rather him win the election than die fighting this battle. He's already slayed a thousand untruths. Now he needs to win the war.

The point is to realize that the universal principle Trump is supposed to adhere to isn't adhered to by any of his opponents. He's been nuked by the sitting president, the Pope, now the supreme court. All these branches of the Cathedral expect to be protected by clerical immunity. They won't be held to the same expectations Trump will be be held to. It doesn't matter that they're all punching down from positions of power that exceed his (at least for now). The direction of the punch doesn't matter. Who? Whom? are the only things that do.

If the heathens abandon unrequited principle in favor of their own interests, the Cathedral will be in serious trouble. Its very edifice is dangerously exposed to Alt Right sappers. Besides these unrequited principles, what argument is there against Vox Day's idea of an American state opening itself up to settlement by whites, exclusively? It won't work? Doubtful. As Vox notes, the number of people who'd move to said state would be staggering. Anyway, that's beside the point. What does it have to do with making the option available?

The only thing that keeps the option--and countless others like it--from being practically discussed and considered is our predilection for and deference to principle, to WEIRDO morality, to pathological altruism.

Shorn of that, we turn to our own interests. We do what non-Europeans have always done. We discard the Kantian categorical imperative. We act instead on nothing more than what benefits ourselves and our posterity.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Today Reuters/Ipsos formally released the results of its latest five-day tracking poll headlined "Clinton extends lead over Trump to 13 points". The national poll of likely general election voters, which was administered entirely online, was made up of a sample that was 50.7% Democrat, 36.3% Republican, and 13.0% independent or third-party.

Reuters/Ipsos is an outlier in the current RCP average. While it shows Hillary leading Trump by 13 points, her average lead across the other seven polls currently displayed is just 3.6 points. The most recent polls released in Iowa (today) and Florida (yesterday) actually show Trump ahead in both, and these are states Obama won in 2012.

Something feels fishy. To reiterate, it could be a consequence of Republican recalcitrance in the face of Trump's refusal to morph into John Kasich, the tendency for people to identify with whatever party the candidate they intend to vote for is from, a problem with Reuters-Ipsos' sampling methodology (either inadvertently, or, more sinisterly, intentionally), some combination of these things, or something else entirely.

Then again, maybe I'm not being cynical enough. Perhaps Heartiste, who is nothing if not perspicacious, offers a better explanation:

Reuters-Ipsos tracks the figures daily. It has done so for a head-to-head match up between Hillary and Trump since May 1. The following graph shows the partisan affiliation of "likely general election voter[s]" through July 8:

That could be a consequence of Republican recalcitrance in the face of Trump's refusal to morph into John Kasich, the tendency for people to identify with whatever party the candidate they intend to vote for is from, a problem with Reuters-Ipsos' sampling methodology (either inadvertently, or, more sinisterly, intentionally), some combination of these things, or something else entirely.

Whatever the explanation, the shift is noteworthy. As the sample has become more heavily Democrat, Hillary's support has correspondingly increased while Trump's has decreased.

His most vociferous criticism of the major party candidates so far has been reserved for the "racist" comments Trump has made during the campaign, even calling Trump a "neo-isolationist" which really must make libertarians feel good!

With NAFTA and TPP, he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Hillary, offering, as she does, the same politically expedient, disingenuous criticism about it containing too much corporatism while actually being on board with it.

On political correctness and the National Question, then--the two meta-issues that are shaping not just the presidential election but the trajectory of the entire Western world--Johnson and Hillary are on one side; Trump is on the other.

The conventional wisdom is that Johnson, the most salient third-party candidate and the only one with ballot access in every state, is another obstacle blocking Trump's road to the white house.

That assumption feels incorrect, however, and to the extent that national polling this far from November matters, the data seems to corroborate that feeling. RCP's average shows a tighter race when Johnson is included than when he is not. Johnson's presence steals 5 points from Hillary and 4 points from Trump.

Jill Stein's inclusion similarly narrows the reported Hillary-Trump gap, though in reality probably even more so than Johnson alone does. Rasmussen, which is Trump's best poll, hasn't conducted a four-way national poll so RCP's three-way and four-way averages appear to be the same but if Rasmussen conducted a four-way, Hillary's apparent advantage over Trump would be slimmest of all.

* Lew Rockwell, in contrast, argues that travelling across property of any kind requires permission from the owner of that property. If land comprising a national border is privately held it is only by the owner's permission that migration may be permitted. If the land is public, then it is in essence owned by taxpayers collectively and it is thus up to them to decide who, if anyone, is permitted to migrate.

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.

In sum, Comey explains that Hillary passed along classified information from one unauthorized, unsecured server to another at least 112 times, each instance constituting a criminal act irrespective of intention.

Regarding intention, she elected to use neither a government nor a commercial account but instead opted for a private server so as to avoid third-party archiving--that rigmarole being more convenient than the 30 seconds it takes to set up a gmail account, since it had nothing to do with secrecy, of course!

The tens of thousands of emails on Hillary Clinton's private server were not there because of simple negligence or carelessness on her part. They were intentionally kept on unsecured servers so that they could be effortlessly hacked by specific entities, foreign and domestic, who knew were to look. Those entities are the ones who've given tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and have paid six-figure speaking fees for Bill or Hillary to give half-hour prepared speeches.

It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that Comey is confirming as much:

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

...

With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.

Hidden from plain sight but totally accessible to those knowing where to look. What's so remarkable is how blatant this all is. It's almost as if they, the Cloud People, are humiliating we, the Dirt People, by rubbing our faces in it.

Parenthetically, that most of the emails were not designated as being classified doesn't mean they were not of use to the entities that were invited to hack them. A personal conversation with an ambassador or another cabinet member or, who knows, the president himself, provides plenty of value to various interested parties.

This naked corruption is orders of magnitude worse than the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon administration. It's worse than Benedict Arnold or the Rosenbergs. The DOJ, under pressure from the Obama administration, won't indict her for any of it, of course.

To the contrary, just a week after Bill Clinton officially inexplicably met with US attorney general Loretta Lynch and hours after the FBI officially inexplicably recommends no indictments be made, Hillary suggests she'll keep Lynch on as AG as president.

Comey on Hillary's gross dereliction of responsibility:

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.

After spending the majority of his time listing Hillary's incompetent and illegal behavior, Comey concludes by noting:

This is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.

If anyone else did this, it would result in "security or administrative sanctions". Meanwhile, Hillary is running for a position that will give her the highest level of security and administrative clearance in the entire country! Stultifyingly blatant.

Edward Snowden need no longer ponder why Comey, after explaining multiple reasons why Hillary should not only have been removed from her position as US secretary of state but also why she should be criminally prosecuted, didn't recommend the indictments:

We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.

Too many people involved. The corruption runs too widely and too deeply.

I don't pretend to fully grasp the position Comey is in. He may, given his precarious circumstances, actually be acting laudably by exposing crooked Hillary as, well, crooked Hillary, while saving his skin--and the lives of those close to him--by officially recommending that nothing be done. It fits Trump's #RiggedSystem approach like a glove.

Perhaps the biggest whopper, straight from the Ministry of Truth, comes as Comey closes:

What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.

Sunday, July 03, 2016

The following is a response to a friend who wondered about my reaction to this. It's germane to subjects that have dominated the blog for the last several months so it's worth sharing, keeping in mind that it's more free-wheeling than I generally (try to) allow myself to be here. I've added a few relevant links.

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So Silver announces the launch of 538's statistical models for the 2016 general election. At the time of launch they give Trump a 20% chance. As new polls come out, the odds will change. Unless you're trading on the prediction markets, it's just a dog and pony show.

Funny that it goes live following several weeks of a Trump polling slump. Where was he a month ago when Trump had a slight edge over Hillary in aggregate? That plus economic conditions, which Silver says increase Trump's odds relative to polling alone, suggest his model may have had Trump as the odds-on favorite then [the model picks up almost three weeks after Trump had the narrow lead--at that point it shows Hillary 66%, Trump 34%].

Nate Silver was spectacularly wrong about the primaries. It's lame that he tries to save face by saying his poll model predicted 52 of 57 states or whatever. BFD, so did the RCP's averaging of recent state polls (minus the unreliable ones from dubious sources) prior to a primary taking place. Silver's being prudent here, copying what the betting markets show and then dressing it up quantitatively. And for the record, there were people--not just amateurs like yours truly, but also significant media figures like Scott Adams--who got it right.

Also, to say Trump underperformed polling by looking at state wins is misleading. He underperformed early and then outperformed late. In Arizona and then in every state after Wisconsin he blew the polls out of the water, even when the race was still on (in NY and the 5 NE states + Indiana). I have no idea how that'll translate to the general election, but it's worth pointing out that, based on polling averages, Remain was expected to win by 2 points. Instead, it lost by the same.

That said, it seems plausible, I guess--as plausible as the local news station's meteorologist making a weather forecast for the Thursday four weeks from tomorrow. None of the debates, which will be the most watched in history, have happened. Conventions haven't happened. VP nominations haven't happened. Trump will blow the sub-$2 million fundraising figure out of the water in June. He's soliciting hard.

On the other hand, as I've said all along, the demographics just keep getting worse for Republicans. They got crushed in '08 (which was predictable enough) but then lost pretty bad in '12, which should've been an easy win based on traditional metrics (basically everything was against Obama except for the fact that he was an incumbent). A year ago the markets had it something like 60%-40% that the Democrats would win the White House in '16. I don't think my prediction that we may never see another Republican president elected in our lifetimes is hyperbolic.

It is nice to see Silver putting pressure on what I've been saying for awhile about the electoral college. Trump's national polling deficit relative to '12 is relegated almost exclusively to the deep red central corridor states where he's going to win anyway. If his margins of victories in Utah, Texas, Kansas, and Idaho are in the single-digits instead of the double-digits but he wins Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio, it's worth it.

Just in time, too, Quinnipiac--which is one of the best--comes out showing Hillary with a 2 point lead nationally, while Rasmussen, the only one included in the current RCP average that is of likely voters (always better than registered voters) has Trump up by 4.

Trump has a problem getting traditional Republicans on board. But Hillary has a problem motivating traditional Democrats, who aren't excited at all about her.

Again, a month ago Trump was slightly ahead. With things swinging that much month from month, it seems foolhardy to use current polling to confidently project a November outcome. The Gravis one is "weighted by anticipated voting demographics". Is Gravis anticipating a 10%+ drop in black turnout?

Parenthetically, a Hillary presidency still makes the outcome of the '16 election cycle better than I would've conceived of a year ago.

To have someone as nakedly corrupt and devoid of any notable achievements throughout the course of decades in 'public service', running on keeping the immigrant floodgates open and disarming the American public while kowtowing to racialist thugs like Black Lives Matter, beat a man who not only refused to apologize for considering the interests of white middle Americans but even had the gall to advocate in their favor at the expense of those outside the inner concentric circles of national loyalty--well, it's difficult to think of much that could do more to push us towards the long-term goal of secession and the disintegration of the empire.

Anything that causes Middle America--and white men specifically--to withdrawal consent from an American empire that plunders the fruits of their labor while treating them as moral reprobate for being white men is a good thing.

Five years ago Brexit would've been laughed off as a pipe dream. Yes, the new government will try to gum it up so that it doesn't happen, but no one said the globalists would go down without a fight!

The best line of attack is to have state governments simply refuse to enforce federal laws. The tenth amendment center does yeoman's work on this front. They pushed for Utah to refuse to provide water for the federal government's NSA facility in the state (it needs a bazillion gallons a day to cool all the servers). The federal government doesn't have the apparatus to run everything--anything, really--so if the anti-federalist push comes from the state level, where it is doable, then we're talking about something more than just individual preppers standing up to leviathan.

The federal government has the military, yes, but history is replete with examples of some central authority ordering its military to do X, Y, and Z when that military, sympathizing with its supposed targets, ends up flipping sides.